The Wood for the Trees

by Richard Fortey

  Our own two small trees in Grim’s Dyke Wood are just at the start of their unhurried saga. Their crowns are well-formed cones of branches, and each branch carries splays of leaves divided into not quite paired, flattened, tough, deep-green needles. From afar the little trees—whose trunks I can almost encompass with my hands—look implausibly dark, almost black, especially when the beech leaves are at their brightest to supply a shimmering backdrop. Yews don’t mind growing in the shade; they revel in it. They seem almost a part of it. They have a metabolic trick that helps them thrive as understory. During the winter months, when light floods the wood and everything else in the plant world has battened down to see out the season, yew leaves continue to photosynthesise. They build their strength while others sleep. The trees grow fastest while they are at our young, moderato stage, later slowing to maestoso, finally settling into molto lento, with growth rings much less than one millimetre wide. I guess that my trees established themselves from seed after the big felling eighty years ago. They still have a long way to go, but when the oldest beech tree falls the yews will not even have reached middle age.

  Yew is an extremely poisonous conifer. Cattle occasionally nibble at the fresher green foliage that appears late in spring from the tips of the branches, and then they die. This raises the question of how the seeds get distributed, since they are equally poisonous. The only part of the tree that is not toxic is the “fruit,” which is a bright-pink, fleshy cup the size of an orange pip, very conspicuous in autumn. It is a strangely modified cone—strictly termed an aril—that surrounds a single seed; the inconspicuous male cones are carried on separate trees. The arils on their own are reputed to taste delicious. Proving this is one experiment I regard as beyond my research remit. Thrushes eat the arils and the seeds together, but the latter pass through their digestive system unchanged, and ready to germinate in a new site. Badgers are supposed to manage the same trick. If we were to scoff whole just a handful of these tempting pink “candies,” we might well not survive. But like many poisonous plants, but very few hollow flints, the yew hides secret treasures: this tree is the original source for a group of drugs (taxanes) that are very useful in slowing or stopping the growth of a variety of cancers. These drugs are one of the most prescribed of all chemotherapies. Huge quantities of yew bark were formerly used in their manufacture, but fortunately, artificial synthesis of relatives of the active compounds has reduced excessive demands on the wild yew population in the last twenty years.

  There is nothing new about threats to the survival of this remarkable tree. Longbows were the most effective weapons of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. They had to be made of different strips of yew: the heartwood closer to the archer compresses as the bow is drawn; conversely, the sapwood forming a layer on the back of the bow is elastic and lengthens during use. Only yew wood has these extraordinary abilities, which, properly exploited, could propel arrows through chain mail. Welsh archers were said to be able to impale fully armed enemies by piercing their armour, leg, saddle and underlying horseflesh in a single shot; the late medieval equivalent of Clint Eastwood’s achievements with a .44 Magnum (except probably true). The bowyer was an exquisitely skilled craftsman who instinctively understood elasticity, aerodynamics and the limitations of human musculature in making instruments of warfare; the arrowsmith shaping his goose-feather flights was scarcely less adroit.

  Fifteenth-century misericord, St. Mary’s church, Beverley, Yorkshire.

  In northern France on 25 October 1415, twenty to thirty thousand Frenchmen, including mounted knights dressed in masterpieces of the armourer’s trade, were defeated by five thousand archers skilled in the deployment of yew longbows, backed up by a mere nine hundred men-at-arms. The Battle of Agincourt was the major English victory in the Hundred Years’ War. It is no wonder that English demand for yew was relentless, nor that it made for big business. The local supply was soon insufficient. It is as well for the survival of old English trees that many venerable yews grew in churchyards, and were inviolable. In 1473, Edward IV decreed compulsory yew imports. For well over a century yew wood was sucked in to London from all over Europe. During the years 1512–1592 the Austrian company of Chrisoph Fürer & Leonard Stockhammer exported 1.6 million yew staves, and this was just one company among many. The combination of the slowest-growing tree with the fastest-rising demand was obviously unsustainable. The forests of Bavaria and Austria were stripped beyond any capacity for natural regeneration. Even Carpathian yews were obliterated to supply the greedy longbows. It could not continue. On 26 October 1595 Queen Elizabeth I decreed that henceforth the army should replace its longbows with guns, even though the bow was still much the more effective weapon. The few remaining wild yews could resume their slow journey towards immortality. Our own small yews still have a thousand years in hand.

  Deer and Dogs

  I hear the strangest cries. They sound like panicky barking from a dog separated from its master or mistress. But the noises are not as insistent as I would expect from a lost dog. Each bark is separated by a few minims of silence. There is something of the crow’s hoarseness about it, but I know it is no bird. The high mewing of a red kite is the only bird I can hear today. Then I spot a warm-brown muntjac deer (Muntiacus reevesi) picking its way delicately through the big bramble patch. Despite its assertive bark, it is a shy animal that is able to vanish in a trice into the dappled distance, so I try to remain invisible. Through my binoculars I observe a pair of tiny antlers, pertly erect, flanked by big sensitive ears. I can just make out a pair of sharp “tusks” projecting down from the deer’s upper jaw. The whole appearance of the animal is somehow defensive, which may be because of its rounded haunches, which seem to make it cringe. It does have something dog-like about it, after all—an unhappy dog. The little muntjac delicately browses a hazel leaf, plucking it fastidiously, chewing discreetly. Then it picks up my presence by some sort of nervous telepathy and, momentarily flashing a white patch beneath its tail, it is off. I have no idea how many muntjacs there might be in Lambridge Wood, but I know there must be a minimum of two, because later there are two barks coming from different directions.

  No wild mammal eats yew, but almost every other plant in the wood is a potential snack for deer. The solitary muntjac is the species I see most regularly. Twice I have surprised a group of roe deer moving in jumpy concert through the wood. They are quite the prettiest deer; when they turn to appraise the threat from a human, they show a great black smudge of a nose and genuine doe eyes. The male’s antlers bear just a few elegant spikes. There is nothing apologetic about their haunches. For a moment I might be that Neolithic hunter after wild game: roe deer were denizens of the wildwood. Bears, wolves and aurochs may have been exterminated or banished, but roe deer still move quietly through copse and woodland, probably safer now than they were three millennia ago. The look they give me is an ancient look, one of wariness stored in the genes and worked out in nature. I do not tell them that I have the shooting rights in my wood, nor do I add that I am probably the worst shot in the northern hemisphere. I am also clean out of stone tools.

  I know for certain that fallow deer, too, have been through the wood, for I have found a shed antler. It is a grander affair than the roe deer’s, with a flared crown and a prominent tine near the base. It is too large to be added to the collection. I have no evidence of the rut from my patch, but I have noticed scuffed patches on dead branches that mark where deer have rubbed off the velvet from their antlers. The Plantagenet Edward, Second Duke of York, hero of Agincourt and author of the hunting treatise The Master of Game (1406–13), described this ritual thus: “about Mary Magdalene day [22 July] they fray their horns against the trees, and have rubbed away that skin from their horns and then wax they hard and strong.” Here was a man equally versed in the histories of harts and yews.

  The three deer species in our wood have different claims upon the landscape. The roe deer is the ancient inhabitant. Fallow deer were introduced by the Normans for
sport and for meat; some say the Romans did this long before. The muntjac is a Johnny-come-lately from China that escaped from Woburn Park and elsewhere early in the twentieth century—a story rather like that of the grey squirrel. A colleague tells me that its odd teeth indicate that it is close to fossil species from the Miocene period, so in one sense it is the oldest inhabitant. All three species do very well browsing in our wood. They love hazel foliage and other fresh leaves. The muntjac deer may be the main culprit in nipping off the flowering spikes of rare orchids elsewhere in Lambridge Wood. If the main interest in woodland were preserving flowering plants, it might be better to exclude deer altogether, but I hate the thought of fencing around our little plot of trees. All naturalists and ecologists (not to say farmers) agree that there are far too many deer roaming freely through field and forest, but there is no consensus about what should be done about it. Most people draw the line at reintroducing wolves.

  The fortunes of deer in England have changed. After the Norman Conquest deer parks and royal forests were the apogee of regal and aristocratic distinction. Wonderful medieval tapestries in the Musée de Cluny in Paris show noble stags and hinds treading on carpets of flowers arrayed like scattered stars. The deer hunt was more than sport; it was the embodiment of kingship. William Rufus introduced dreadful punishments for any infringement of Forest Law, and poaching venison—or indeed anything—became a risky venture. Stonor House, three miles north of the wood, is still surrounded by a deer park. Eight hundred years of occupation by the same family encourages a certain respect for the past, though the large herd is no longer hunted with bow and arrow; it is culled when necessary using suitably modern means. A deer park was an important part of Greys Court in its medieval heyday. For centuries, venison was among the most highly regarded of meats.

  Recent research suggests that the few surviving ancient parklands may approximate to a kind of open forest—more savannah than dense wildwood—that once spread widely across north-west Europe.8 Deer parks continued to be a part of the necessary trappings of large estates, to demonstrate success and status to envious neighbours. Private grounds became less coarse pasture with scattered trees, dedicated to a thoroughly practical function, and more a display for vistas designed for aesthetic qualities. But even the picturesque and deliberate landscapes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries liked to feature elegant deer. Henley Park, a few hundred yards from the wood on the other side of the Fair Mile, was then not so different from Stonor as it is today. Cattle could be an attractive grace note on the planned landscape, but handsome bucks still had the edge. Venison continued to be a staple with status for the table, although only the leg and part of the saddle was served to royalty. The Duke of Wellington’s favourite dish in 1816 was neck of venison.9 Allowing fine bucks to go to waste would have been inconceivable. Nowadays, battered carcasses of deer knocked over by speeding vehicles are a common enough sight in the Chiltern Hills. Nobody stops to pick up the bodies. Magpies peck at them, fitfully. What might once have fed a family for weeks now rots unheeded by the side of the road. There are too many deer, and they are held in too little regard.

  Deer cause damage to woodland by topping off seedling trees before they get established. I have met wood-owners who complain that they have no natural regeneration whatever as a result of such depredation. I was puzzled why Grim’s Dyke Wood seemed to have escaped the worst. There are dozens of seedling ash trees all vying for a place in the canopy, and plenty of young beeches, and even small cherry trees. I am more worried about squirrel damage than I am about the destruction caused by deer. On one visit in July I realised why this should be. Four roe deer ran past me in full flight from the section of Lambridge Wood further down the hill. A few minutes later a professional dog-walker emerged along one of our footpaths with a straggling bunch of dogs on leads, and an aged retriever plodding behind. Several dogs cocked their legs against beech trees as they passed. As far as the deer were concerned, these were wolves, in a pack, and their Neolithic flight reaction was immediate.

  Grim’s Dyke Wood has three public footpaths running more or less around its perimeter, and it is easily accessible from Henley-on-Thames. It is part of a regular beat for dog-walkers; the paths must be redolent with dog scent. Deer coming this way will always be twitchy and on guard. This may explain how our young and regenerating trees have survived. I wish that squirrels were equally vulnerable, but they scamper up trees with insouciant ease to safety when enthusiastic puppies that know no better attempt to catch them. In general, though, dogs are my friends.

  Gratitude was not a general emotion early in my wood-owning days. I may be a dog-lover, but I do not feel obliged to love their owners. An Alsatian comes at me, barking dangerously and showing its teeth in a way that does not require an ethologist to decode. “He doesn’t like people wearing hats,” the middle-aged woman who owns him says accusingly. Or I am way off the footpath searching for fungi underneath the holly trees when two mongrels attack me in a way that would cause a roe deer to die on the spot. “They don’t like people carrying baskets,” the gum-booted couple explain haughtily, whilst retrieving their animals with an air of reluctance. “Particularly under bushes.”

  Into the Sunshine

  It is good to have breezy, sunny weather after all the rain. Now the wood displays brightly illuminated patches on the more open ground, while under the thickest beech canopy the flinty soil remains dark. There is a kind of dancing chiaroscuro all around as the wind tosses the high beech foliage. Everywhere is a whispering susurration. New leaves on the hazel are held out like hands gratefully to receive the light around the clearing. I am glad to see that the squirrel damage so conspicuous a month ago has faded to grey. Seen from afar, cherry trunks rise blackest and straightest in all the wood, while their polished bark almost glitters in the sun, but the same paintbrush dapples the trunks of the beeches in gold flashes. The lower beech branches wave slowly in the breeze, back and forth like seaweed fronds under water.

  Tufted hair grass (Deschampsia caespitosa) is the last of the woodland grasses to flower. It is all elegance, carrying several three-foot-high sprays that glisten silver in the intense light like feathery fireworks. False brome (Brachypodium sylvaticum) is a leafier grass with a shorter, drooping inflorescence, as if the effort of flowering is just too much. The sun has brought out white bramble flowers held above the big patch, but some early fruit has already set, all dense and green surrounded by a tonsure of brown and faded stamens. I shall never know which of the four hundred bramble microspecies is our very own; no flower book can tell me. But whatever its scientific identity, the white blossoms that seem rather routine to us must have a very particular attraction for insects. Here are hoverflies of at least four kinds, dashing and pausing, some imitating wasps, others pretending to be bees. With two rather than four wings, they are only flies in fine dressing. A comma butterfly is no more than an orange flash until it briefly settles to reveal the etched and scalloped edges of its wings. A red admiral flashes its scarlet bars of authority as it unrolls its proboscis carefully into the white florets. It seems to be in no hurry at all. Several flitting, flirting ringlets are all dark-brown discretion until they close their wings and reveal several small white “eyes” with bright dots at the centre on the undersides. A green-veined white butterfly looks so much more decorous than the white butterflies whose caterpillars destroy my cabbages. They are all as smart as can be. Then just a single silver-washed fritillary, much larger than the comma, almost glides in and settles—the prize of the show. Like a mannequin it twirls around a flower head to show off its orange livery, all spotty and dashed dark-brown. I will it to stay, but it is off to wow another naturalist.

  The breeze has brought down clumps of cherries from the crowns of the trees. They hang together, a few cheery red balls like the chubby cheeks of cherubs, the biggest not much more than half the size of the cultivated variety. I taste one carefully. There is a gentle, acid sweetness to the flesh that is much more subtle than
the lip-smacking lusciousness of the commercial fruit that descended from it. A few untidy clots of pale cherry stones are scattered around on the ground. They must be the excreta of some cherry-guzzling bird that has been feasting on the brief bonanza high above my head. But which bird? Surely only a big, black crow would have the craw to crop a crowd of cherries.

  In spite of the relatively recent rains, this hot, dry weather has turned the beech litter into a crackling and inhospitable waste. The mosses that were so lately spongy, verdant cushions have now shrunk in on themselves to conserve water. Micro-organisms that flourished in the wet will no doubt have transformed into tiny resting cysts to see out the drought. In such weather small mammals must hunker down in their deepest burrows or under damp logs, only emerging at dusk. I can hear little birdsong now—nothing to detract from the rustling of the leaves, and somewhere in the background the mournful groan of a jet aeroplane finding its way to Heathrow. As I look for fungi in the conifer woodpile, I find instead a fat brown toad sheltering under a rotting plank. He regards me with a kind of stoic indifference. I replace his shelter, mumbling an apology.